App Review: Asphalt 5 by Gameloft

We’ve been eager to get our hands on Asphalt 5 ever since Gameloft announced that a sequel to Asphalt 4 was coming. So for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been racing and racing. After all, if you’ve seen the trailer, then how could you not be excited for this game? If you’ve been holding back in purchasing this game, then read on to find out if it’s worth it or not…

When you launch the game you are greeted with a typical intro that gets you excited and ready to play. You can select a Quick Race, Single Race, Career Race or Multiplayer Race. You are also greeted with your first car, a Cooper Mini. However, you also have a Nissan 370Z which you will want to switch to and use (at least, I did). Choosing Career allows you to unlock more cars, a lot more cars. There’s everything From SUV’s to motorcycles that are waiting to be unlocked so pretty much everything that’s worth racing is in there.

Aside from selecting your car each one is also highly customizable – providing you’ve unlocked the various customizations. There are three groups of customizations: Engine, Handling and Boost. Under engine, there are options such as ECU, intake, exhaust and turbo to customize. Under handling you can improve things like your suspension and braking and under boost you can increase capacity and speed. This high degree of customization makes sure that you’ll be entertained for hours not just racing, but building that perfect race car.

As previously mentioned, there are several types of racing modes (Quick, Single, Career and Multiplayer). Selecting Multiplayer requires that you setup an account with Gameloft Live in order to play online. However, once you do you get to join others online in racing against real people, and not computer bots. Like other games that are online, this adds a whole new dimension to the game that makes it that much more enjoyable. If you don’t want to race online but still want to race your friends, no worries. The game offers two local multiplayer modes to easily race friends that are close to you (same house): you can use either bluetooth or WiFi for greatest flexibility.

Graphics on Asphalt 5 are actually really great, however they aren’t much better than other racing games or previous versions of Asphalt on the iPhone. However, for a racing game they are well done and full of detail.

Gameplay for Asphalt 5 is excellent. You can select whether you have auto acceleration or not in the options which allows you to focus on steering and braking (and racing!). To steer, simply tilt/rotate the device in the direction you want to turn. There is also a boost button that comes in handy for getting that extra edge on your opponent (you will use this a lot in the multiplayer online games). I found no annoying quirks or issues while racing, which is nice since most racing games seem to implement some aspect of racing that just bugs (like your opponents always crashing into you).

Being a big fan of racing games I was happy to get my hands on Asphalt 5 and give it a go. The game is fun and will keep dedicated racing fans entertained for hours. Asphalt 5 is an easy recommendation as it is fun and provides hours of excellent gameplay. We didn’t find any real issues either, which is a nice relief.

What we liked: Online gameplay is great, highly customizable cars, a lot of cars to unlock, hours of gameplay, ability to just quick race if you don’t have the time to dedicate.What we didn’t like: Cost (probably not a drawback but many will find the 7.00 entry fee to be too expensive).